Professional Communication in

a Digital, Social, Mobile World

Chapter 1
 • Understanding Why Communication Matters
• Communication is Important to your Career
• What Makes Business Communication Effective?
• The Basic Communication Model
• Understanding What Employers Expect From You
Chapter 1 • Adopting an Audience-Centered Approach
Outline • Inside the Mind of Your Audience
• How Mobile Technologies are Changing Business
Communication
• Using Technology to Enhance Business
Communication
• Committing to Ethical and Legal Communication
 Communication is the process of
transferring information and
meaning between senders and
receivers, using one or more
written, oral, visual, or electronic
Understanding
Why
media.
Communication
Matters The heart of communication is
sharing—providing data,
information, insights, and
inspiration in an exchange that
benefits both you and the people
that you are communicating with.
Communication is
Important to your
Career
• You can have the best ideas in the world, but they are
no good to your company or your career if you can’t
express them clearly and persuasively.
• Improving your communications skills may be the
single most important step you take in your career.
• If you learn to write well, speak well, listen well, and
recognize the right way to communicate in any
situation, you will gain a big advantage that will serve
you throughout your career.
What Makes Business Communication Effective?

Effective communication enhances the connection To make your communication as effective as possible,
between a company and all its stakeholders—those focus on making them practical, factual, concise, clear,
groups affected in some way by the company’s action. persuasive.
What Makes Business
Communication
Effective?
• 1) Provide practical information: Give recipients useful
information that will help them perform a desired
action or understand a new company policy.
• 2) Give facts rather than vague impressions: Use
concrete language, specific details, and information
that is clear, convincing, accurate, and ethical.
• Even when an opinion is called for, present powerful
evidence to support your conclusion.
 What Makes Business
Communication Effective?

3) PRESENT INFORMATION IN A
CONCISE, AND EFFICIENT MANNER:
CONCISE MESSAGE SHOW RESPECT FOR
PEOPLE’S TIME, AND THEY INCREASE
THE CHANCES OF A POSITIVE RESPONSE.
4) CLARIFY EXPECTATIONS AND WHEN NEEDED, CLEARLY STATE WHAT
RESPONSIBILITIES: CREATE MESSAGES YOU EXPECT FROM AUDIENCE
THAT WILL TRIGGER A SPECIFIC MEMBERS OR WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR
RESPONSE FROM A SPECIFIC AUDIENCE. THEM.
 What Makes Business Communication
Effective
• 5) Offer compelling, persuasive arguments and recommendations:
Show you readers exactly how they will benefit by responding the
way you want them to respond to your message.
 The Basic
Communication Model

Copyright © 2017 Pearson Education,

Inc. Chapter 1 - 9
The Basic Communication Model

• By viewing the communication as a process, you can find ways to improve the skills
you need to be more successful.
• The eight steps in the communication process are:
• 1) The sender has an idea: Whether a communication effort will be effective starts
here and relies on the nature of the idea and the motivation for sending it.
• For example: if your motivation is to offer a solution to a problem, there is a better
chance in creating a meaningful message than if your motivation is simply to
complain.
 The Basic Communication Model

• 2) The sender encodes the idea as a message: When a person puts

the idea into a message ( which you can think of as a “container” for
the idea)—he or she is encoding the message or expressing it in
words or images.
• 3) The sender produces the message in a transmittable medium:
With the right message to convey an idea, the sender needs a
communication medium (the form a message takes) to present the
message to the target audience.
• Examples: face-to-face, written (email message, SMS, social media).
 The Basic Communication Model

• 4) The sender transmits the message through a channel:

Communications channel (is the system used to deliver the
message).
• Examples: Internet, television, radio, mobile, magazine.
• 5) The audience receives the message: If the channel functions well,
the message reaches the intended audience.
• The fact that the message has arrived does not mean the message
will be noticed or understood correctly.
 The Basic Communication Model

• 6) The audience decodes the message: After the message is

received, the receiver has to understand the message which is called
decoding.
• 7) The audience responds to the message: By developing messages
in ways that show the benefits of responding, the sender increases
the odds that the receiver will respond positively.
• 8) The audience gives feedback to the sender: Besides responding or
not responding, audience members may give feedback that helps the
sender evaluate the effectiveness of the communication effort.
• Feedback can be verbal (using written or spoken words) or nonverbal
(using gestures, facial expressions or other signals).
Understanding What Employers Expect From
You
• Today’s employers expect you to be skilled at a wide range of communication tasks
such as:
• 1) Possessing digital information fluency: being able to recognize information needs,
finding efficient methods to find reliable information especially from online, and
gathering the information ethically.
• 2) Organizing ideas and information logically and completely.
• 3) Expressing ideas and information coherently and persuasively
• 4) Actively listening to others
Understanding What Employers Expect From
You
• 5) Communicating effectively with people from different backgrounds and
experience.
• 6) Using communication technologies effectively and efficiently.
• 7) Following accepted standards of grammar, spelling, and other features of high-
quality writing and speaking
• 8) Communicating in a civilized manner.
• 9) Communicating ethically
• 10) Managing time and resources wisely
Adopting an Audience-Centered Approach

• An audience-centered approach requires understanding and respecting the

members of your audience and meeting their needs.
• The approach is also called the ”you” attitude in contrast to messages about “me”.
• When using this approach, the sender should learn about the education, age, status,
style, and personal and professional concerns of the receivers.
• For individuals that you do not know, you should use common sense and
imagination.
Adopting an Audience-Centered Approach

• The ability to relate to needs of others is a important part of emotional intelligence

which is a critical to being a successful leader and manager.
• The more you know about the people that you are communicating with, the easier it
will be to focus on their needs and make it easier for them to hear to hear your
message, understand it, and respond positively.
Adopting an Audience-Centered Approach

• A key part of the audience-centered communication is etiquette, which is the

expected norms of behavior in any specific situation.
• The way you conduct yourself and interact with others can have a major influence
on your company’s success and your career.
• When a company hires you and promotes you, they expect your behavior to protect
the company’s reputation.
• The more that you understand business etiquette, the better the chance that you will
avoid career-damaging mistakes.
Inside the Mind of Your Audience

• The following are some methods to get your message noticed by your audience:
• 1) Consider audience expectations: You should deliver messages using media and
channels that the audience expects.
• For example: If your coworkers expect to meetings to be delivered by email, don’t
suddenly start sending messages via blogs postings, without telling anyone
 Inside the Mind of Your Audience
• 2) Ensure ease of use: If your audience are actively looking for your messages, they
most likely won’t see the messages.
• Do not make your messages hard to find, navigate, or read.
• 3) Focus on familiarity: Use words, images, and designs that are familiar to your
audience.
• For example: Most visitors to company websites expect to see information about the
company on a page called “About” or “About Us.”
 Inside the Mind of Your Audience
• 4) Practice empathy: Ensure that your messages speak to the audience by clearing
focusing on their wants and needs not yours.
• People are more likely to notice messages that relate to their concerns and needs.
• 5) Design for compatibility: For the messages that are delivered electronically, be
sure to that the message you are sending is technologically compatible with your
audience.
• For example: If your website requires visitors to have a specific video capability in
their browsers, you will not be able to reach the audience members who do not have
that software installed or updated.
 How Mobile Technologies are Changing
Business Communication
• The following are some ways mobile technology is changing the practice of
business communication:
• 1) Constant connectivity is a mixed blessing: Mobile connectivity can blur the
boundaries between personal and professional time.
• On one hand, mobile connectivity can stop people from fully disengaging from work
during family and personal time.
• On the other hand, mobile connectivity can give employees more flexibility to meet
their personal and professional needs.
 How Mobile Technologies are Changing
Business Communication
• 2) Small mobile displays and sometime-awkward input technologies raise new
challenges for creating and consuming content:
• For example: email messages need to be written and formatted differently on
mobile devices to make them easier to read.
• 3) Mobile users are usually multitasking: Half of mobile usage occurs when people
are walking and therefore they can’t give their full attention to the message on the
screen.
 How Mobile Technologies are Changing
Business Communication
• 4) Mobile communication, especially text messages has placed great pressure on
traditional standards of grammar, punctuation, and writing in general.
• 5) Mobile devices can serve as sensory and cognitive extensions:
• For example: Mobile devices can help people experience more of their environment
(such as augmented reality apps that superimpose information on a live camera
view).
• Mobile devices can also give people instant access to information with having to rely
on faulty and limited human memory.
Using Technology to Enhance Business
Communication

• The following are ways to effectively use technology in your business

communication:
1) Keep technology in perspective: Technology is simply a tool to help you get your
work done.
• Technology is an aid to interpersonal communication not a substitute.
• 2) Guard against information overload: The overuse or misuse of communication
technology can lead to information overload which involves people receiving more
information than they can effectively process.
Using Technology to Enhance Business
Communication

• 3) Use technology tools productively: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other

technologies have been refereed to as the “information technology paradox.”
• They are called the information technology paradox because these information tools
can waste as much time as they save.
• 4) Reconnect with people: Even the best technologies can harm communication if
they are overused.
• For example: many employees complain that their managers rely too much on email
communication instead of face-to-face communication.
 Committing to Ethical and Legal
Communication
• Ethical communication includes all relevant information, is true in
every sense, and is not deceptive in any way.
• Unethical communication involves distorting or manipulating the
truth in many ways such as:
• 1) Plagiarizing: which is presenting someone else’s words or creative
product as your own.
• 2) Leaving out essential information: Information is critical if your
audience needs it to make an intelligent objective decision.
 Committing to Ethical and Legal
Communication
• 3) Selective misquoting: misrepresenting or hiding the true intent of
someone else’s words is unethical.
• 4) Misrepresenting numbers: Statistics and other data can be
unethically falsified by increasing or decreasing numbers,
exaggerating, modifying statistics, or leaving out numeric data.
• 5) Distorting visuals: Images can be manipulated in unethical ways,
such as modifying photos to deceive audiences or changing the scale
graphs and charts to hide differences.
 Committing to Ethical and Legal
Communication
• 6) Not respecting privacy or information security needs: Not
respecting the privacy of your audience and others or failing to
properly protect sensitive information in your possession can be
considered unethical and sometimes illegal.
 Reference

• Bovee, S.L., & Thill, J.V. (2018). Business

Communication Today, 14th edition, Pearson
Education Limited.